Note: This story takes place in Donna Lamb's 'Devil in Drag' universe, used with her permission. Image above is by C.D. Rudd of his character Ethan, cosplaying as Supergirl. Used by Permission of C.D. Rudd. Supergirl is a character owned by DC Comics.

Sophie Drake took a deep breath, and smiled.

Autumn had always been her favorite time of year. The fading days, the scent of decay on the air. It was the slow decline into the cold, hard winter, as the biting chill would start to worm its way into people's bones and seasonal depression would set in, leaving them morose and irritable.

Convincing The Old Man Upstairs to do it was still one of her proudest achievements, and no amount of angora sweaters and pumpkin spice the mortals could consume would change that.

"And on top of that, there's Halloween," she said aloud, getting a grumble of agreement from the brindle mastiff trotting along beside her.

The last two decades had not been particularly kind to Sophie. The Old Man hadn't been too happy with her after that whole fiasco with the singer and the politician, and the other singer, and Sophie's escapades tripping the light fantastic for a while. In the end she'd been left with two options: spend a hundred years among the mortals, living as they do, with no access to her cosmic powers, or cede her throne in hell permanently.

"Uppity little shit," she mumbled, getting another gruff wuffle of agreement from her companion.

Gabriel had been trying to convince the old man to kick her out for years and let him take over in Hell, arguing that temptation and trickery and lust just weren't the motivators they used to be.

Sophie was having none of it. He could keep his flow charts, and his reorganization plans, and his folders full of little colorful tags separating things, up in Heaven. 'I may be the avatar of sin and temptation,' she thought, 'but even I'm not THAT evil.'

If keeping Hell free of a multi-tiered corporate structure, and herself free to roam the world sowing mischief, required a measly century spent wandering around sewing said mischief in an entirely more personal way... well, she'd never been afraid of getting her hands dirty.

'Is it sowing mischief or sewing mischief?' she wondered. She rather preferred the idea of sewing it, since that involved jabbing things with needles, something she was always a fan of. It annoyed her a little that she couldn't take credit for the little evil of confusing homophones, something humans had cooked up all on their own.

The Old Man had done her one favor, and that was letting her choose her form. That was why she was now strutting her way down the street outside Hellsingr College, where she was enrolled as a co-ed. Lots of delicious trouble you could get into on a college campus, especially with the kind of build she'd opted for.

Bill hadn't been so lucky, but he'd settled into the role of her faithful pooch well, and had eased up on his moaning when he realized it meant he could lick himself in public with impunity.

Besides that, tonight was special.

It wasn't just autumn: it was October.

It wasn't just October, either. No, it was October thirty-first: Halloween.

And it wasn't just Halloween....

"Strangefellows Day," she said aloud, lifting one of her dainty hands and rubbing the soft material of her angora sweater against her cheek. The third odd Thursday in a month, and Her Day.

She could feel the tingle in her fingertips, just the lightest touch of infernal magic, as the weave of the world around her weakened. It was some time yet until that witching hour, when the bonds were at their barest, but maybe. Just maybe.

Her canine companion wuffled again and wagged his tail. One could almost imagine he was, in fact, chuckling.

"Come on, Bubb," she said, turning toward Greek Row and bouncing just a bit on her heels. Stuck on the mortal plane or not, Sophie was still the Devil... and the Devil always gets their due.

#

Riley West was having a bad day.

It had started with checking in at the meal hall only to find out that his food card was out of credit.

It had proceeded to only get worse from there, finding that someone had broken into his car and stolen his Psychology textbook (the second book he'd had stolen so far), getting a call from his mom that his old golden retriever, Bullet, was missing again, and, lastly, having to go to the costume store and pick up the embarrassment he was expected to wear at the Halloween party.

He hadn't wanted to go to the Halloween party in the first place. As a legacy pledge he hadn't had to go through the hazing that so many of his fellow freshmen had suffered, but he was still on the last rung of the totem pole. Ladder? Whatever construct you used, he was right there at the bottom.

Combine that with his small size and generally go-along-to-get-along attitude and his interactions with the other members of his fraternity tended toward... not antagonism, per se, but certainly a sense of misplacement.

Eta Epsilon Iota. HEI, though most everyone he'd met stylized it as HEL, appropriate both for Hellsingr College and for his own opinion of what the next four years were likely to be.

And that was without worrying about the party that night. A party that was not only compulsory for him, according to his older 'brothers' in the frat... but where there were certain expectations of the freshmen, expectations that even his legacy status didn't get him out of.

Expectations that were even now weighing down the garment bag in his right hand, distracting him from where he was walking... right up until he ran into a soft, pumpkin-spice-scented wall.

"Ooof!"

"Hey!"

"Grrrrrrr!"

Riley bounced once on his ass, barely catching himself before falling even further. That was little help, though, as he found himself thrown back yet again, pinned where he lay by a salt-and-pepper hound that probably outweighed him by twenty pounds, and out-drooled him by a gallon.

"Bubb!" Came a sharp, feminine voice from behind the dog.

"Yipe!" Said Riley as the dog bellowed again, this time close enough to rattle Riley's skull.

"William Caliban Bubb, you let him up right now!" The feminine voice said again, with fearsome authority.

The beast seemed to hesitate before stepping off Riley's chest, allowing him to take a breath he hadn't realized he was being denied as he pushed himself up on his elbows and gasped.

"Shit!" He rasped. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to...." Riley's words died as he looked up, and up, at the woman he'd run into. "Shit," he said again, this time more quietly.

He'd seen Sophie Drake around campus before. Everyone had -- she was hard to miss. A bit over six feet tall in the heels she always seemed to wear, with straight raven-black hair down to her ass. "Blacker than sin," he'd heard some of his frat-mates call it, the particular sin on their minds usually clear in the huskiness of their voices.

All curves from top to bottom, both of which were generous without being excessive, and all of that combined with a face that always seemed to have a little bit of a smirk on it.

She was just the kind of girl to get a title like "Ice Queen," if it weren't for the fact that she was known to be quite liberal with her affections. Rather, she had a reputation for being an entirely different kind of queen, the kind with whips and chains in her bedroom, and no safe words.

Riley had chalked most of that up to rumors alone, but sitting on the ground, staring up at her, there was an unmistakable air of control in her eyes, blue pits of flame that seemed to burrow into his brain and grab hold of something there. Not his libido, like so many of his frat-mates, but something else.

"You okay?" She asked, offering him a hand up. He took it less out of need than out of a feeling that he should, wincing slightly as the force of her grip shot a pain through his metacarpals and right into his wrist.

"Ah! Uhh, yeah. Just... think I mighta pulled something," he said, shaking the hand she'd pulled him up by once it was loose, though the pain faded as quickly as it had hit. "Sorry about, umm. I was--"

She laughed, a wicked sound for all its jollity. "Distracted? I'm used to it," she said, preening a bit.

"...Yeah," he agreed, not daring to admit that it wasn't her that was distracting him.

Her eyes went down to the garment bag he'd dropped. "Oh, that's. You're in HEL house! You a frosh?"

He could feel the blush burning his cheeks as he looked away.

Sophie laughed again, ominously. "It's superheroes this year, right? Or should I say--"

"Yes! It, ah, it is," he interrupted, feeling guilty about it but not wanting her to finish her sentence. Not in public.

"Uh huh." She looked him up and down, the fire in her eyes seeming to melt his clothes away as she did so. "Well, I'm sure you'll look...." She paused. "Gorgeous."

Riley tried to avoid her gaze as he bent down to retrieve his costume. What little dignity he had left defenestrated itself when her dog -- Bill? -- gave a woof and stuck his nose in Riley's ass, getting a shocked bleat from the boy.

"Down boy," Sophie said, then laughed again. "We're letting Riley off with a warning this time."

With a final wink, and a tug on a black leash Riley would swear hadn't been there moments ago, Sophie began walking away, leaving Riley wondering when he had given her his name.

#

"Hey Kara! Get yer ass over here with those drinks!"

Riley grumbled to himself as he picked his way through the crowd of frat boys and girls and other upperclassmen, two bottles in each hand. "Here ya go, Chuck," he said with false enthusiasm, trying to keep a smile on his face and well aware it was coming across more as a pained grimace.

"Finally! If you'd been any later I'da had to give you a demerit for your performance tonight," Chuck said, to a round of vicious laughter from his friends. "Then again, how good you look in that getup, I'm sure you could work a few of those off after the party." He leered at Riley, as if to imply he expected exactly that.

Riley stiffened, but kept the grimace-smile on his face as he turned his back on the boys, getting more mocking catcalls from his frat-mates as he marched off to retrieve more beers and take them to other attendees. He was underage, but no-one at the party seemed to care, and it wasn't like he was going to be drinking anyway.

Not the way he was dressed.

In a way, Riley supposed, he'd gotten off lucky. The Supergirl costume he'd wound up with was at least fairly modest. The skirt was shorter than he thought it was supposed to be, and the flare of it seemed to imply he had more shape than he did, as did the padding in the chest, but it was better than what some of the other frosh had wound up with.

Poor Derek had wound up in a Psylocke costume, and had spent half the night sneaking off to try and adjust things in the leotard. Gary was dressed as Nebula, likely because he already had the shaved head for it, and Barry had ended up wearing a classic black-and-purple 1960s Catwoman costume. He could almost pull it off, if it weren't for the moustache he'd refused to shave for the part. Chuck had given him six 'demerits' for that, whatever those meant.

Riley really didn't want to find out.

It had been a hell of a night. The party had started shortly after dark, and so had Riley's time as barmaid, delivering drinks and snacks to the upperclassmen at the party. He'd tried to call off on the whole thing, even going so far as to try and invoke his legacy status to get out of the job, but he'd been given an ultimatum: either 'man up' and do the job, or be out of the frat.

Out of the frat meant out of the frat house, meant his father's disapproval, meant losing a good portion of his money for college. For all his complaints about Hellsingr and its reputation for debauchery, it was his father's alma mater, and it had a great engineering program, both of which had led to him choosing to go there in the first place. Just a few years and he would be home free.

If wearing a skirt for one night was the price of that... he would pay it. How bad could it be?

He jumped and barely managed to set down the tray of snacks he'd picked up as he felt and heard the smack of a burly hand on his ass.

"Hah! Doin' good, Riley, doin' good," said Oded, a tall senior in the frat. He grinned at Riley and squeezed, making Riley jump again. " Sorry, I mean Supergirl. Y'know, if I didn't know better I'd--"

"I gotta get back to work," Riley said, cutting the senior off.

"Ah, okay," Oded said, giving Riley a slightly unfocused smile. Riley could smell the alcohol on his breath, wafting down the almost foot difference in their height and settling around Riley like an intoxicating cloud. "But if later you wanna--"

Riley walked away before Oded could finish what he was saying. He briefly worried about one of the 'demerits' so many of the upperclassmen had threatened the froshes with all night, but rumbling laughter from behind him and past experience told him Oded was unlikely to hold a grudge.

And it wasn't like it was the first offer he'd gotten that night.

He hadn't expected the group of Beta Kappa Phi girls to descend on him when he'd first started the night, but as soon as they saw him they swept him to the side and, joining forces, had given him a makeup look to match his costume.

They used the same tactic on the other froshes, but for most of them the results had been middling or comical at best. All the girls had cooed as they worked on Riley, though, praising his smooth skin and complexion and promising to make him gorgeous.

Gorgeous. Just like Sophie Drake had proclaimed.

Riley wasn't sure how much of the harassment he'd received during the night was his fratmates taking the piss and how much of it was legitimate interest, but as the night had gone on the gropes had become less frequent while the come-ons and even flirting had become more flagrant as the alcohol at once loosened inhibitions and levelled out libidos.

This time Riley did drop the tray of snacks as another hand groped him, this one not slapping or grabbing his ass but pinching it, hard.

"Oww!"

"Hah! And here I thought Supergirl was supposed to be immune to getting hurt!"

Riley spun around, glaring up at Chuck. Like Oded, Chuck was almost a foot taller than Riley -- not much of a surprise, given most of their brothers were. But there was one key difference between Chuck and Oded. Even after all the beers he'd had there was still enough clarity in his eyes to assure Riley he knew exactly where he was and what he was doing.

"Two demerits for dropping the tray," Chuck said, sneering. "Now pick it up."

Riley rolled his eyes, tired of everything and ready to pitch in the towel. A room and a legacy wasn't worth this. Nevertheless, he squatted and began picking up the scattered bowls and larger snacks, leaving the snack mix to get trod into the carpet.

"Hey. Hey!" A hand on his shoulder almost knocked Riley down, and he looked up to find Chuck still sneering at him. "Not like that. Stand up and bend at the waist. Show us that ass like a good bitch."

That was it.

Riley stood up. "No, Chuck. And I'm not your bitch!" He said, surprising both himself and the larger boy with the force.

Chuck took a step back, then snarled, "Six demerits. Two more and you're mine for whatever. Bitch." He laughed cruelly. "Get cleaning, Supergirl."

Riley rolled his eyes and squatted again, ignoring Chuck as he picked up the tray and bowls again. "I wish I really were Supergirl," he muttered under his breath. "Maybe then I could teach you a lesson about how to treat people."

He felt something strange surge through him, from his toes to the roots of his hair, before a pair of rough hands grabbed him under the armpits and began to lift him up.

"Bitch, you'll listen when I give you an order!"

Not quite sure where they found the strength, Riley spun in place, tearing free of Chuck's hands, and punched him in the stomach.

#

Sophie scritched behind Bill's ears as they sat on the bench across from the frat house, waiting.

The tracking spell she had placed on Riley was all she could manage at the time, but it had been enough for her to know when she needed to be ready, and as the night had gone on her magics had grown stronger, allowing her to subtly nudge here and nudge there, with lust and other emotions that lay in her domain, until the trap was set.

She'd felt the tug of the magics at work. She didn't have a lot of control, but it was 2AM, and the veil was at its thinnest, and the Wish had been made, honest enough in the moment to make all the difference.

And now....

She jumped, just a little, and Bill let out a surpised wuffle of his own as the front window of the house shattered, frame and all, and the body of a very large and very surprised Chuck tumbled out, over the porch rail, and into yard beyond, trailed by a mixture of screams, cheers, and one frustrated bellow of feminine rage.

Sophie smiled as she watched Chuck groaning on the ground. He was already one of hers, and had been easy enough to twist into the impetus she needed for Riley's change.

"Come on, Bill, time to go home," she said, standing up and walking away. The Clarences would be there soon, and she wanted to have a little time to gloat while they cleaned up.

She'd be in trouble, sure. But she'd been in trouble before.

It was worth it.

-End-

###

NOTE: I hope you enjoyed my little adventure in Lanie Lee and Donna Lamb's universe!

-Melanie E.